What does the famous sweet potato prosperity in history mean? Why?

Sweet potato flourishing age is the anti-drought flourishing age in the eyes of history of qing dynasty lovers.

In fact, friends who have seen Kangxi Dynasty know that there is such a sentence in it, which Redjade said to Rong Fei, "Wealth has always been the wealth of the master, not the wealth of the slave."

It is said that this so-called prosperous period can be traced back to the Little Ice Age in the late Ming Dynasty, when there was a nationwide crop failure, and even "67 people in 10 were exiled, and only one or two acres were planted in ten acres". However, in the Kangxi period, due to the calm of the war and the extensive cultivation of high-yield sweet potato introduced by Xu Guangqi from the New World in the Ming Dynasty, the harvest of crops was guaranteed, and the economy of the Qing Dynasty showed a trend of recovery and development.

First of all, there is more arable land. In the twenty-fourth year of Kangxi, there were 600 million mu of cultivated land in China, and by the time Emperor Qianlong died, this figure had reached one billion mu. The increase of cultivated land means the increase of grain output, especially in the south, such as Guangdong. Some places produce early rice and late rice, and the three harvests of sweet potatoes increase, which is called three crops a year. Further north, Jiangxi grows early rice and buckwheat, which are harvested twice a year. The prevalence of this multiple cropping system leads to an increase of more than 6 billion kilograms of grain every year. Compared with the output, the grain output of the Great Qing Dynasty is said to have more than doubled during the Wanli period of the Ming Dynasty. Even the British Macartney Mission, which visited China at that time and complained about the Qing Dynasty, was said that the grain harvest rate in China was higher than that in Britain.

And the key word here is sweet potato!

This plant was first planted in Mexico and Colombia, and entered China in Wanli years. It is said that Chen Zhenlong, a Fujian native, saw this root crop "edible both raw and cooked, with high yield and barren tolerance" in the Philippines, so he immediately introduced it to Fujian, which is mountainous and has few fields. Because this plant comes from other places, people in China call it "sweet potato". Later, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, there was a serious flood in the south of the Yangtze River, resulting in crop failure and displacement of hungry people. Xu Guangqi was in Shanghai at that time, so he introduced sweet potatoes from Fujian to Shanghai and then spread them to the whole Yangtze River basin.

By the Kangxi period of the Qing Dynasty, sweet potatoes had spread to more than half of China, but it should be pointed out that the government advocated them very hard, and even the emperor himself personally ordered Zhili Province to "encourage planting". Therefore, sweet potato has become the fourth largest food crop in China after rice, wheat and corn.

So, is the population expansion leading to the widespread cultivation of sweet potatoes, or is the cultivation of sweet potatoes leading to the population expansion? In fact, Emperor Kangxi himself admitted that although the Great Qing Dynasty boasted of peace and prosperity, the people actually did not even have enough to eat. People's food is not enough, and people's livelihood is not as good as before. This description appeared on the courtier's throne and even on the imperial edict, which shows that it is true.

What should I do if I don't have enough to eat? The emperor instructed: Plant sweet potatoes!

It is precisely for this reason that the views of all parties on the so-called prosperous time of Kanggan are quite different. First of all, at that time, only Emperor Qianlong boasted that "the country was in full swing". However, at that time and for a long time afterwards, the general understanding of China society was nonsense, that is, the flourishing age that was pulled out, rather than the flourishing age that was really recognized by the public. Admirers are only imperial literati and young people.

The reason is that during the Jiaqing period following Qianlong, peasant uprisings broke out in Sichuan, Chu and Shaanxi, Cai Qian uprising broke out in the southeast coastal areas, and the most serious was the Tian Li uprising in the north. The rebels even rushed into the palace, "which led to something that never happened in the Han, Tang and Song Dynasties." This kind of thing is obviously not what should happen in a prosperous time.

Moreover, in an era when people don't even have enough to eat, they have to rely on sweet potatoes to satisfy their hunger. Even if the TV series is no better, the novel is no better, and the slogan is clear, you are still a sweet potato dynasty after all. You know, during the same period, Britain was close to the basic completion of the industrial revolution, and even the industrial workers you think are the most down and out began to eat breakfast. Because the workers didn't eat enough in the morning, they couldn't do the hard work for half a day. So at that time, all people in Britain began to eat breakfast, mainly toast and tea. 1782, a Prussian was full of praise for English toast: "You take slice after slice of toast, fork it with a fork and bake it with fire until the cream melts. It's really delicious. "

In 1782, that is, the forty-seven years of the Qianlong reign of the Qing Dynasty, the so-called sweet potato prosperity, the broad masses of people in China were praising the wisdom of the emperor to eat in roasted sweet potatoes.